Configuring Electra Autorouter?

[mbed]

I have few small and a few lil big boards to route for my product. I generally prefer to hand route, but due to short of time and resources I would like to try out autorouters. I have shortlisted Electra and freeautorouting.net . I found freeautorouting.net easy to configure but did not get expected results and not not sophisticated enough. Electra seems to be a really sophisticated autorouter and I have a difficulty understanding the right settings for my routing job. I would like to have a tutorial (not a quick start) to precisely understand the configuration settings of ELECTRA. I am using Eagle for my PCB designing and exporting the dsn file.

 

[keith1200rs]

Why not use the Eagle autorouter or have you tried it?

Keith.

 

[marce]

I would reccomend you use the term 'interactive routing' rather than 'autorouting', cos if you autoroute a board , as you have found from your initial trial, you do not get the reulsts you expected. You have to split the design into sections and route each one according to importance, this will include manual routing of critical nets, quite often. A rough guide is:
1: Power and Ground
2: Critical nets, clocks etc, quite often better manualy routed and fixed
3: point to point SMD, very simple signals that go from one pad to another, dependant on placement. A quick router pass single sided with no vias allowed and very little effort.
4: Busses and length ciritical routes, including any length matching.
5: The left overs, ie non critical signals.
6: Manual tidy up